well, tomorrow i’m teleworking, so i guess it’s really only a 4 day weekend, but at least i don’t have to go into the office for the next 5 days. i’m still recovering from last weekend, where last friday me and the guys went drinking and bowling and i got way too drunk. for some reason every time i missed a critical shot, i’d punch the little score computer and i started doing it harder and harder. well now i have scabs on two of my knuckles and my wrist is really sore, dumb. on saturday i was hungover and throwing up until the evening so that day was a complete waste and then on sunday me and eric were playing army up in the mountains and i rolled my foot when i tripped on a rock, dumb. i’ll be more careful this weekend. all i plan to do is go to a car show, a gun show and eat turkey. gobble gobble!

So I updated my xbox this afternoon with the new firmware and it really is impressive. The animations, sounds and overall feel is very similar to the Nintendo Wii, and while the customizable avatars are a blatant ripoff, they’re still pretty cool.

One of the features that I was most looking forward to is the Netflix integration. I use to have netflix a couple of years ago and when i realized i was barely watching any of the movies, canceled it. But now that you can stream the movies directly off of your xbox through the new interface, i decided to sign up for a free trial again.

The least expensive monthly service package is $8.99, which let’s you rent a single physical dvd at a time and unlimited streaming time (the trial is free for 2 weeks). The first thing that I was happy to confirm is that you can watch HD over component cables (there’s copy protection over the hdmi, and often that means they don’t allow you to use the content over the unsecure component). Unfortunately though, their HD selection sucks. There wasn’t a single movie in there that I wanted to watch, even though the quality of the few i tried out did look pretty good. The SD selection is much better, although still lacking and the quality is about the same as a upscaled dvd, although a bit softer looking. I’m not sure if i’m going to use the service or not, we’ll see how the next 2 weeks go.

saw this in long beach today… anyone have any idea?

edit: yeh, per ben’s guess and mike’s translation, it’s just a hebrew version. case solved!
http://store.barackobama.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=BS26748&CartID=1

i know all i’ve talked/blogged/emailed about in this past week are my stupid teeth, but it really has been controlling my life. i’ve actually lost 5lbs in the last 7 days and while i’ll probably gain that all back immediately, it’s just made me lethargic. i haven’t been going to the gym for fear of ripping my stitches when i make my funny faces with heavy weight, and i think that’s why i haven’t been sleeping well and yeh, eating only mash potatoes and protein shakes fucking sucks.

so today i had my follow up and my oral surgeon gave me the all-clear to finally start eating regular foods again. the dissolveable stitches have dissolved and the wounds are nicely healing. there’s still these super deep holes and he gave me pressure syringes to clean out the food after every meal which is kinda gross, but if it means i can eat regular food again, i’m all for it. on my way home i stopped at del taco and got my fast food burrito of choice since 1996: the spicy chicken burrito. more of it probably went up into the holes than down my stomach, but damn it was good.

now that i don’t have to worry about dry sockets or other complications, i feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. i even went to the gym (and did shoulders) which was pretty weak, but felt great. i can also start taking care of taka instead of her taking care of me. on monday we went to the obstetrican and he gave her and the baby a clean bill of health. we didn’t do a sonogram but we got to listen to the baby’s heart… exciting stuff. in two weeks we get to find out the sex, and probably will be able to see if it’s got the extra fingers or not, eric’s taking bets by the way.

…and i found this sexy pic i took on my way home from the surgery:

since thursday, i’ve been on a good dosage of vicodin for the pain from my wisdom teeth extraction so everything already has been kinda foggy. the steroid i’m taking also has “euphoria” listed as a side effect, so with those two combined, every thing’s been weird. i played gears of war 2 and finished it on saturday morning, and while i think it was fun, i really don’t even remember it. i’ll have to play it again.

for some crazy reason, it’s been almost 90 degrees for the last couple of days here, and it’s been so smokey from all of these california fires in los angeles and the oc that there’s been an ominous orange glow outside which combined with my already foggy vision and memory just makes it all the more strange. i’ve only been eating pureed food and protein shakes, so that’s weird, and i got these 4 huge holes in my mouth. anyway i’m almost out of vicodin and today am trying to switch off to motrin anyway. i talked to my boss today and i think i’m going to take monday off as well and hopefully things will be back to normal by tuesday.

i made the appointment to get my wisdom teeth pulled almost a month ago and i’ve been anxious about it ever since, and each time i felt like just canceling, i realized that i get a 4 day weekend if just go through with it, so yeh, today i got them pulled.

the procedure was quick and painless. the oral surgeon, dr. silegy, is this buff, cool dude, with a very fancy office and hot nurses. i think i already mentioned that he’s one of the surgeons on that extreme makeover show. after they put the anesthesia drip in me, i had about 10 seconds to say ‘i’m feeling woozy’ before i was out. when i woke up, i felt like i hadn’t even fallen asleep, and there wasn’t any pain.

taka took the day off to drive and take care of me, and i picked up gears of war 2 to keep me entertained. i’m also on a good strong dose of vicodin and a steroid called methylprednisolone, so i feel pretty drugged up and pain free. at least it’s over with, and after this heals i can start some braces.

this past election i voted no on proposition 8, per my little election guide. i didn’t really look into the proposition, other than what i heard both sides arguing in their advertisements, and i figured yeh, why should i vote to deny anyone rights.

i was surprised that it passed here in such a liberal state, but since the election i’ve started to think more about it, what it is they want and what they are being denied. and in listening to gay activists like ellen and in playing devil’s advocate arguing with some of my politically savvy friends, i’ve kinda flip flopped on the issue again.

in all of these protests and on every picket sign, the argument is about “rights.” they argue how in the past we’ve denied women the right the to vote, we’ve denied blacks and other minorities numerous rights, and we’re on the same path again, denying gays the right to marry. but in califorina we have civil unions for same-sex couples, which affords them all of the rights that opposite-sex couples have in marriage.

from wikipedia:

In California where domestic partnership has been available to same-sex couples since 2000, a wholesale revision of the law in 2005 has made it, like the New Jersey civil union law, equivalent to marriage in every respect at the state level, though neither is recognized by the federal government.

so this isn’t as much a rights issue as it is an argument over the word “marriage.” same-sex couples have all the rights as opposite-sex couples do, they can have their civil union blessed by a church, no one’s going to stop them from calling themselves “married” if they want to, they can refer to themselves as each other’s husbands or wives. it’s just on one document somewhere in the county courthouse it’s checked “civil union” instead of “marriage.”

and here’s the thing, marriage really is defined as a union between a man and a woman, so it’s not like they’re being denied a right, it’s that people aren’t willing to change the definition of the word for them. it’s like if i was adopted by a mexican family when i was a newborn, grew up with mexican culture, speaking spanish and it being the only thing i ever identified with, yet when i fill out some government form, i can’t check “latino”.

anyway, i know that this is the unpopular stance (well, i guess it’s the popular stance, but not among my friends) on the subject. but comparing women who were being denied a right to vote, or blacks who were kept as slave’s for God’s sake, to same-sex couples being denied the right to have a word changed to accomodate them seems like a stretch. i don’t regret voting no on 8, if it didn’t pass and they redefined marriage, i really wouldn’t care. i just think that they’re being misleading about this being a rights issue.

while i’m just as patriotic as any american, i don’t think i’ve ever owned or flown an american flag, but seeing a flag on the ground has been engraved in my mind as something that’s just wrong. so today which was windy as hell here in redondo beach, as i was leaving the gym, i saw a large flag blowing down redondo beach blvd. it had kinda stopped in the center lane, so i pulled over and ran out to grab it, but the stupid fucking wind kept blowing it further away, so here i was chasing the flag down 4 lanes of traffic. before i kept running, i looked up and fortunately cars in both directions stopped for me. after like 100 feet, i caught up to it, and drivers from two of the cars actually waved as they drove past me as i was walking back to my car. anyway it was one of those proud-to-be-an-american moments. i’ll hang it off my balcony on tuesday for veterans day.

i stole this from digg. the last picture looks like the camera man staged it, but it’s a great set of pics either way: